Songs from Vagabondia — The Joys of the Road

Now the joys of the road are chiefly these: A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees;

A vagrant's morning wide and blue, In early fall when the wind walks, too;

A shadowy highway cool and brown, Alluring up and enticing down From rippled water to dappled swamp, From purple glory to scarlet pomp;

The outward eye, the quiet will, And the striding heart from hill to hill;

The tempter apple over the fence;

The cobweb bloom on the yellow quince;

The palish asters along the wood,-- A lyric touch of the solitude;

An open hand, an easy shoe.

And a hope to make the day go through,-- Another to sleep with, and a third To wake me up at the voice of a bird;

The resonant far-listening morn, And the hoarse whisper of the corn;

The crickets mourning their comrades lost, In the night's retreat from the gathering frost;

(Or is it their slogan, plaintive and shrill, As they beat on their corselets, valiant still?

) A hunger fit for the kings of the sea, And a loaf of bread for Dickon and me;

A thirst like that of the Thirsty Sword, And a jug of cider on the board;

An idle noon, a bubbling spring, The sea in the pine-tops murmuring;

A scrap of gossip at the ferry;

A comrade neither glum nor merry, Asking nothing, revealing naught, But minting his words from a fund of thought, A keeper of silence eloquent, Needy, yet royally well content, Of the mettled breed, yet abhorring strife, And full of the mellow juice of life;

A taster of wine, with an eye for a maid, Never too bold, and never afraid, Never heart-whole, never heart-sick, (These are the things I worship in Dick) No fidget and no reformer, just A calm observer of ought and must, A lover of books, but a reader of man, No cynic and no charlatan, Who never defers and never demands, But, smiling, takes the world in his hands,-- Seeing it good as when God first saw And gave it the weight of his will for law.

And O the joy that is never won, But follows and follows the journeying sun, By marsh and tide, by meadow and stream, A will-o'-the-wind, a light-o'-dream, Delusion afar, delight anear, From morrow to morrow, from year to year, A jack-o'-lantern, a fairy fire, A dare, a bliss, and a desire!

The racy smell of the forest loam, When the stealthy, sad-heart leaves go home;

(O leaves, O leaves, I am one with you, Of the mould and the sun and the wind and the dew!

) The broad gold wake of the afternoon;

The silent fleck of the cold new moon;

The sound of the hollow sea's release From stormy tumult to starry peace;

With only another league to wend;

And two brown arms at the journey's end!

These are the joys of the open road-- For him who travels without a load.